Three years on, Gian Sagar Medical College likely to resume operations

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, October 26

Three years after it was shut following a controversy over financial mismanagement, Gian Sagar Medical College at Banur is likely to resume functioning this year after the new management of the college pays Rs 1.5-crore endowment fund to the state government.

While the Medical Council of India (now National Medical Commission) has already given its nod to the college to make admissions to 100 MBBS seats this time, the state Medical Education Department wants the college to deposit Rs 1.5 crore as endowment fund before resuming functioning. The fund would be utilised for meeting fee and other expenses of students in case college faces a crisis similar to the one it had faced in 2017, said sources in the Medical Education Department.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) and Dental Council of India had withdrawn the recognition to the dental and medical colleges of the Gian Sagar Educational and Charitable Trust in 2017 after the management failed to come up with a concrete revival plan for the institute. At the time, the government had shifted around 1,500 medical and dental students to other medical institutions operating across the state.

The Baba Farid University of Health Sciences has already started the process of MBBS and BDS admissions. It is expected that the state will have 1,135 MBBS and 1,030 BDS seats this time.

There are hopes of addition of 100 new MBBS seats in the state with the starting of BR Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences at Mohali as the fourth government medical college in the state.

During the inspection of the institute some time ago, the MCI board of governors had denied permission to grant temporary recognition to the Ambedkar institute to start classes due to inadequate infrastructure and teaching faculty.

Since then, the process to recruit the faculty has been going on in top gear so that the MCI’s decision could be reviewed. However, the National Medical Commission has refused to review the MCI decision, revealed sources.